Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

ART. XIX.-Landscape Illustrations of the Waverley Novels, Parts XI. XII. XIII. and XIV. London: Tilt. 1831.

THE later numbers of this publication, fully maintain the high character, which at once secured for the earlier parts a degree of popularity, almost as extensive, we believe, as that which the novels themselves have acquired. In proof of the justness of our opinion, we need but refer to the views of the Links of Eyemouth, Home Castle, Manor Glen, Solway Sands, and of York Minster, which the numbers before us contain, and which are all executed in admirable style.

ART. XX.-1. The Religion of Socrates. Dedicated to Sceptics and Sceptic-makers. 8vo, pp. 106. London: Fellowes.

1831.

2. Essays on the Lives of Cowper, Newton, and Heber, and an examination of the evidence of the course of nature being interrupted by the Divine Government. 8vo. pp. 330. London: Fellowes.

1830.

MR. POTTER, the author of both these works, seems to have a great horror of two things, of the education of the people, and of their becoming evangelical; or rather, indeed, he has a horror only of the former, because he thinks that it leads inevitably to the latter. We shall, however, say nothing upon these topics, as we have reason to know that he has regretted the attacks which he has made upon the policy of popular education, because he is now convinced that it is not fraught with all the evils which he apprehended. As an es sayist, he seems to us somewhat too fanciful, his dread of the evan

gelical sects being so great, as to carry him into trains of reasoning, far beyond the natural scope of his subject. In the first of these two publications, it is his object to shew what Socrates thought upon the subject of religion, and why he thought it; conceiving, erroneously as we fear, that that distinguished philosopher acted under a strong sense of obligation to God. The single act by which he cut short the term of his life, which we are sorry to see palliated by the author, would be sufficient to our understanding to prove the contrary. The three first essays contained in the second work, have been already before the public. Upon religious points they are exceedingly intolerant. Those upon the course of nature and divine government, embrace a boundless field of observation; miracles, the interpretation of the apocalypse, and a variety of other themes, the discussion of which does not belong to the pages of a literary review.

ART. XXI.-Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds. By Colonel G. Montagu, F.L.S. Second Edition. With a Plan of Study, and many new articles and original observations. By James Rennie, A.M., F.L.S. 8vo. pp. 592. London: Hurst and Co. 1831.

MR. RENNIE, of whose labours in the interesting department of natural history, we have had frequent occasion to speak in terms of high praise, and who perhaps has contributed more than any one of his contemporaries to render that study popular, has conferred a great obligation upon the public by the alterations and very material improvements which have been introduced by him into Montagu's Ornitholo

gical Dictionary. In its former state, that valuable work was little known, chiefly on account of the difficulties which its general arrangement presented. These difficulties Mr. Rennie has removed, as far as the nature of the subject would allow; and in order to render the matter of the book more easily accessible to the student, he has added an alphabetical index, which gives peculiar value to the present edition. He has, moreover, distributed the contents of Montagu's Introduction under their proper titles in the body of the work, and in its place has substituted an excellent Plan of Study, drawn up from his own experience, which will be particularly useful to the inexperienced observer of natural objects, for whose information he has made some very pertinent observations upon the proper use of systems and classifications, and framed an estimate of the works of naturalists, in order to guide him in the choice of books. The Ornithological Dictionary thus enlarged, and in every respect improved by Mr. Rennie, is entitled to be ranked amongst the standard works which adorn our language.

ART. XXII.—Orlando Furioso, translated into English Verse from the Italian of Ludovico Ariosto. With Notes. By William Stewart Rose. Vol. viii. 8vo. pp. 272. London: Murray. 1831.

THIS forms the concluding volume of the translation of the Orlando Furioso, upon which Mr. Rose has been engaged during the last ten years of his life. In its progress we have so repeatedly expressed our favourable opinion of the spirit and accuracy with which he performed his task, that it now only remains for us to congratulate him

A

upon reaching the termination of his labours. It is not, perhaps, upon the whole, so perfect a performance as we could have desired; in the essential points of smoothness of versification, and terseness of diction, it is certainly inferior to Mr. Wiffen's version of Tasso, a work that has not yet attracted all the attention which it deserves. small edition of that version has been lately published, in two volumes, which we trust will meet with extensive circulation. We do not hesitate to place Mr. Wiffen, as a translator, next to Sotheby, whom he almost rivals in the fidelity and elegance with which he converts his original into English.

[blocks in formation]

2.

Familiar

1831.

German Exercises. By A. Bernays. Svo. pp. 216. London: Treuttel and Co. 1831.

THE increasing number of publications connected with the study of the German language, which we have lately witnessed in this country, shews that it is every day becoming more popular amongst us. It is but justice to those eminent professors who have bestowed their attention upon this subject, to say, that their labours have contributed very materially to abridge those of the student. To Mr. Bernays, we are particularly indebted for the several useful elemental books which he has already published, and to which he has just added a series of Exercises, in English and German, certainly the best of the kind that we have yet seen, for a young beginner. Mr. Klattowsky's Manual is a more extensive work, the first volume

[blocks in formation]

Road-Book of the Route from London to Naples: containing 24 highly finished Views from original drawings. Edited by W. "The Brockeden, Author of Passes of the Alps." Part I. Demy 8vo. London: Murray. Rodwell. 1831. WHEN We inform the reader, that the illustrations of this work are engraved by William and Edward Finden, from original drawings by Prout, Stanfield, and Brockeden, we need scarcely add, that it may be bailed as a valuable accession to the many splendid specimens of art, which have been lately published, and are now in progress in this country. The engravings commence with Dover, where the figure of the steam-boat waiting for the traveller, is ingeniously concealed behind the pier, from a just feeling which taught the designer, Stanfield, that a vessel of that description is not one of the most picturesque of objects. We recognize it only from its volume of smoke, which points towards Calais. The castle and the cliff, and the swell of the tide, with fishermen preparing to go out, form the principal objects in the scene. We are next landed at Calais, where every thing speaks

and looks of France; the long pier, the flat low sands, the oyster men and women with their baskets on their backs, the spires of the churches, and the clearer sky. We next behold the glories of the French diligence, with its cumbrous appearance, its full load of passengers, surrounded by beggars as it approaches the ancient town of Abbeville, which is seen in the distance. Beauvais, with its fine old architecture, and its Gothic abbey next succeeds; the passengers being supposed to be at dinner, while the diligence remains outside the inn. The interior view of the town and abbey is exquisitely beautiful. The reader would probably next expect a distant glimpse of Paris; but instead of this, we have from the sketch of Brockeden, a view of the Place Louis XV. from a house in the rue Rivoli; a point from which all the architectual splendours of that noble section of the French capital are seen to the utmost advantage. In addition to these plates there is, in this number, a short, but excel-* lent map of the route from London to Paris. The letter-press, by which they are accompanied, is written in a plain style, and it touches only on those topics which a traveller is most anxious to know something about, arrangements for the journey, passports, money, modes of conveyance, luggage, expenses, general nature of the country, and the most remarkable objects in the towns through which he passes. This new Road-book is undoubtedly the most complete work of the kind that has ever been

published. It is portable, practiful, and as an entertainment on the cally it will be found eminently useroad, nothing can surpass its illus

trations.

ART. XXV.-The Bridal Night; The first Poet; and other poems. By Dugald Moore. 8vo. pp. 256. Glasgow: Blackie and Co.

MR. Dugald Moore is already known, and not unfavourably, to some of our readers, as the author of "The African," in which, mingled with much of good poetry, sentiments of the purest benevolence towards the natives of that continent were found, and have since been more than once applied with effect by travellers, and others who have been engaged in discussions upon our settlements in that quarter. The poems contained in the volume now before us, are of an order superior to many of those which it has lately been our doom to notice. In the Bridal Night,' a Corsair story, there are some beautiful stanzas, to which we should have given unqualified admiration, if they had not, unhappily, too frequently reminded us of Lord Byron. The First Poet' is rather too pompous in its style. The Invocation by which it is preceded is particularly turgid, the author praying of Solitude to quit every place that she inhabits, 'midst storms, and rocks, and clouds, and cataracts,'-her

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

Runic dome, built by the polar hurricane,'-to inspire his lay. We do not wonder after this beginning, to find him talking of 'strangled seas,' and 'dreaming atmospheres,' and adamantine gulfs,' and 'yawning deserts,' and silver grottoes,' and a multitude of other things, which a disordered fancy alone could suggest. What will be thought of the following morceau ?

[ocr errors]

'Twas hush'd;-the earth Slept cradled in the moonshine; while the gale,

Echo's young whispering handmaid, shaded back

The playful tresses of the amorous clouds From the white-bosom'd moon, that sat

unveil'd,

High 'mid the starry solitudes of night, Where silence in her loneliness had spread

A couch to rest her in the silver air !'

This is all in deplorable taste, which Mr. Moore should forthwith reform. That he can write with

simplicity and energy, when he pleases, we think the following address to a ship's pennon will satisfactorily shew.

'Away, away, to the topmast high,
For that is thy native place;
There wanton in the blue of the sky,
Like a star in the depths of space.
Through many a fair and sunny clime
It is thy lot to range;
Through wastes where the fingers of wi-
thering Time

Has ne'er written one word of change. The dim and starry wilderness,

And the deep and mighty sea, And the lone blue clouds that each other kiss,

Are the kin that will be with thee. Thou'lt dance aloft in thy measureless hall,

While the solitary breeze
Wakes silence, to join his carnival

On the broad and weltering seas. Thou'lt ride alone in thy fields of blue,

Like eagle on the blast,

Above the heads of the gallant crew

That nail'd thee to the mast.

And if they meet their country's foe, They'll sink in the depths of the yawning main,

Ere they strike thy towering plumage low,
Or fling on thee one stain.
Flag of Britain! what earthly eye

Can gaze on thee in thy lonely flight? The sun in the awful depths of the sky, The homeless clouds that fringe his height,

The round living moon that rolls thro' night,

The streamers that play through the groves of space,

The stars that sit on their thrones of light,

Can eye thee alone in thy pride of place.

When the ocean shrieks o'er his mighty

[blocks in formation]

Oh! may no ruffian tempest warp

His arms of lightning round thy form. But may'st thou glitter again on our land, Red rover of the pathless sea,

And kindle each heart on the cheerless strand

That lonely waits for thee!

The sentiments expressed in these stanzas can be best appreciated by a Briton, who, far from his native island, beholds her flag waving in the breeze for the first time, after a long interval of absence.

ART. XXVI.-A Synopsis of the Origin and Progress of Architecture, to which is added, a Dictionary of General Terms. By William I. Smith. 8vo. pp. 133. London: A. J. Valpy. 1831. WORKS upon architecture are generally so voluminous, and, from the plates that accompany them, so very expensive, that they are altogether out of the reach of many persons in our mechanical classes, who would be desirous of informing themselves on the subject. They will, therefore, thank Mr. Smith for the abridgment which he has given in this volume, of the origin of architecture in Asia, and of its subsequent progress in Egypt, Greece, and Western Europe; to which he has added a brief and masterly account of the principal antiquities which now exist in Italy, France,

and Spain. His work contains a luminous description of the orders of architecture, with a chronological arrangement of the different styles, a historical sketch of the principal English cathedrals, and, what is particularly useful, a dictionary of general terms. The synopsis is illustrated by eleven plates, which, without much increasing the price of the volume, render it sufficiently complete for ordinary purposes. We much approve of this publication, and recommend it as a class-book for schools.

ART. XXVIII.-Family Classical Library. No. XVIII. Horace, Vol. 2. Phædrus. 12mo. London: Valpy. 1831.

THE Appendix to Horace fulfils the promise which Mr. Valpy gave, of adding to Francis a variety of odes, translated by different hands. The names of Swift, Addison, Otway, Pope, Warren Hastings, Thurlow, Archdeacon Wrangham, Lord Byron, and many others, shed peculiar splendour over this portion of the volume. The whole of Smart's translation of Phædrus occupies no more than about 80 pages. We need not again insist upon the great convenience and value of this excellent collection.

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

Bedouins in London.-It is not generally known that at the British and Foreign School, in the Borough road, there are fourteen Bedouin youths at this moment receiving education. When they first entered the school, in 1829, they were exceedingly uncivilized, acting, as far

as they could, upon the old maxim of their fathers. 'Let him take who has the power." They deprived the other boys forcibly of several things, which they were with difficulty prevailed upon to surrender. They were at first taught by motions and gestures, and are now quite docile.

« ZurückWeiter »